Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director UNEP, Hilary Benn, UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Mr Pavan Sukhdev, Head of Deutsche Bank's Global Markets business in India; leader of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study and now also of UNEP's Green Economy initiative.

Background2008 may prove to be a watershed year with food and fuel crises swiftly followed by a financial one.

Faced with the Great Depression President Franklin D Roosevelt rapidly adopted his famous recovery-focused New Deal. It set the stage for the biggest economic growth the world has seen.

Today we need similar vision, urgent action and strong political engagement to direct financial flows and manage markets to deal with the even greater global challenges of our time.

These range from climate change; poverty; job creation for the 1.3 billion people under or unemployed and accelerating natural resource scarcity to the need to fuel and to feed six billion, rising to nine billion people by 2050.

A new Green Deal, generating businesses in renewable energies; clean tech ventures, sustainable agriculture, conservation and the intelligent management of the planet's ecosystems and nature-based infrastructure is already underway.

Accelerating this transition is at the core of the Green Economy initiative and the best bet for global, sustainable wealth and employment generation for 1.3 billion poor people.